Theresa May made one thing clear during today's speech – she will not be leaving the dance floor

The spring was back in the prime minister's step. She looked, perhaps for the first time, like an asset to her party, not a liability

As Theresa May strode out on to the stage beneath the sounds of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” there was, at first, just a flash of what was to come. It was no more than a demi-shimmy, halfway to the lectern, a terpsichorean whisper, slipping the surly bonds of those stubborn hips.

But the crowd enjoyed it and so she carried on. She was at the lectern now. Her shoulders were jerking, her brittle arms karate chopping across her midriff as if calling an aircraft in to land.

It might have been at this point that she may or may not have started screaming: “LISTEN TO THE WORDS! DANCING QUEEN! AND LOOK AT ME! I’M STANDING HERE DOING THAT WEIRD DANCE I DID IN AFRICA! THIS IS THE OPENING GAG OF THE SPEECH! THIS IS THE BIT THAT’S MEANT TO PUT YOU AT EASE! I THINK IT’S GOING WELL! DO YOU THINK IT’S GOING WELL?!”

Which meant that when the speech began in earnest, with some self-deprecating material about coughing fits and collapsing backdrops, the audience had been delivered to the place it always seems to be for a Theresa May speech, which is to say, wide-eyed, fully on edge and blanched with the kind of terror that you normally only get from watching YouTube videos of Chinese teenagers dangling one-handed off the tops of half built skyscrapers.

But the rising fear and dread did not last. Theresa May lives in an impossible political predicament. She is the victim of brutal parliamentary maths and a brutalising parliamentary party.

In the circumstances she could not possibly have done a better job. It was a fine speech, and I can give it no higher praise than to say simply that it was worth listening to. That’s not something that can be said for any political speech of this mad era of British politics. It’s easy to forget that reasonably large numbers of people actually part with large amounts of their own money to come and listen to this stuff, for actual fun. It will surely be the first time in years they’ll have gone home feeling un-disappointed.

She spoke, believe it or not, with an easy air. The audience were actually enjoying themselves. She delivered a large number of precise and immaculate filletings of Jeremy Corbyn and the Corbyn project, and the “bogus solutions that would only make things worse”.

“When you nationalise services,” she said. “Investment in them goes down, because when governments are setting budgets, they will always choose schools and hospitals over reservoirs and railway, so people get a worse service.” It’s hard to disagree.

But she leads a party and a country both hopelessly divided over Brexit, and there is no escaping the impossible positions that will always force her into. “Let’s say it loud and clear,” she declared at one point. “Conservatives will always stand up for a politics that unites us rather than divides us.”

It’s wild, this. Absolutely wild. Given a solitary year of majority government for the first time in a quarter of a century, the Conservatives gave the nation the most divisive event that has happened to it in four hundred years, from which it remains entirely unclear how it is meant to recover.

She dismissed talk of a second referendum, which “wouldn’t be a people’s vote it would be a politicians’ vote, telling people they got it wrong the first time”.

Mainly, it would be the people passing verdict on how the politicians have got on with handling the first people’s vote, and that’s her, and the numbers suggest that verdict would be damning.

The backdrops have only said one word all week: opportunity. And she spoke of the opportunity Britain, and the Conservatives, give to the nation. “To dream, and strive, and achieve a better life,” she said. “To know that if your dad arrived on a plane from Pakistan, you can become home secretary.”

Sajid Javid smiled and clapped. It has since been pointed out many times that it is far from clear whether his dad, an unskilled migrant who worked on the buses, would be allowed into Britain under the new immigration policies proposed by Theresa May.

Still, in her defence, when it comes to providing opportunities for people to join the government, she is as good as her word. Six people have had that opportunity just in the last year – the defence secretary, foreign secretary, home secretary, brexit secretary, deputy prime minister and international development secretary. On that front, the message couldn’t be clearer: if you want to get ahead in life, don’t just vote Conservative, sign up. You certainly won’t be short of job openings.

She promised an end to austerity, just as she did last year, while she embarks on Brexit, of which there is no evidence whatsoever to support any conclusion other than that it will make the country poorer.

And she harked back, again, to what she “said on the steps of 10 Downing Street” when she became prime minister. That’s a phrase that frankly needs to be retired. She spoke then of “burning injustices”, in the criminal justice system, of the lower life expectancy of poorer people, the gender pay gap. All those injustices burn brighter now than they did at the time.

“Together,” she said at the end, “let’s build a better Britain.”

That, frankly, is not going to happen. But at least the spring was back in her step. It all felt rather like what she might have imagined the job of prime minister must be like. She looked, perhaps for the first time, like an asset to her party, not a liability.

And, more to the point, one that will not be shifted easily. Which was, of course, the point.